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As you all know, I am pursuing my PGDM (part time executive) program at IFMR, Chennai. Love the college and the profs there.

Of the many subjects I learn during this 3 year course, I enjoy 3 in particular. Here is what they are and why:

Organizational Behavior:

One of my favourites. It’s a subject which teaches you how to run the people aspect of any business successfully. It’s about how EQ & iQ can help you work with your team members in complete sync. This course also teaches on traits to be a successful leader, a good team member, or how to recruit the right person for a job, and what kind of HR practises we need to put in place to foster a good culture. OB (as it is usually referred to..) is also about strategies you can put in place to make a company a great place to work .

I learnt the dynamics of group behaviour and , conflicts and negotiations and various other theories on managing teams and on how to become a good manager.

Learning it part-time helps me connect what I learn in class to what is happening in my organization.

Course Materials include case studies and text book : Organizational Behavior by Robbins, Judge and Sanghi

Economics:

I majored in this subject during my UG . Again, love the subject . There are days when I wish that i had become a pure economist and a researcher than becomea marketing guy. I get to understand the Indian and world economy from Macro and why people but and do what they do from Micro Economics. Through practical examples and theory from Greorgy Mankiew books , I love reading reading up on economics .

Marketing :

The bastard son of Sales. I am a complete marketing guy. And I love Brand Marketing specialization because I am all about communications and relationships. I have always known that one day I would become brand marketing and communications guy. I just honed in on digital marketing and e commerce at later stage of my career .

I am not a great fan of advertising but love the idea of building brands through publica relations, BTL, word of mouth and digital .

That is 9000 hits in 5 months. I am being approx here. But still the number is big considering the fact that i dont blog great . My grammar is always wrong ( those who know me will know that i hate typing and love writing) and the sentence flow will always go for a toss.

This ought to change.

From now I am going radically change the way I blog .

Also, I will only blog about econmics , social media and e business, public relations and word of mouth marketing.

I will also share my thoughts on japanese culture, language , literature and anime . I love anything and everything to do with Japan.

But then I may break the rules once in a while.

Thanks to everyone who dropped by to read my blog posts. I know you dint take away much but i am going to do my best to give you knowl-takeaways when you read my blogs from now.

Is it good news ? Of course not. Why should it be ? Think about it. Deflation arises when less money is chasing more products. So the question now comes – Is it that we Indians have no money to buy ?

On the contrary,Indians have the money to invest. How else would you explain record number of new mobile connections sold ? How else will you explain Mercedes selling more cars in India than in most of the so called “‘mature”, “developed” markets ? How else can you explain the IPL commercial values involved? How else can you explain DTH connections sold in drones in the last 6 months?

So you see , we can safely say that we Indians have the money to spend. What prevents us from spending a lot ( unlike last year) is the fear factor.

France , America, Britian has millions of job loses reported . France had 3 million out on streets protesting against wage cutes and unemployment. How many such rallies have we seen in India? I will let you answer that question.

First, let us accept the accept that the Indian economy clocked 9% G.D.P last year and it was fueled by entrepreneurship . But, unlike our counterparts ,Indians are largely insulated by the bad economic troubles. But true to our risk averse mind set we are saving our money and too scared to invest or buy in indulgence. Therefore , demand is low.

There are 2 ways at looking at it. Positive and Negative. Taking the current discussion under consideration, we are forced to look at the negative reasons. And negative reasons are very scary indeed.

What can be done ? Two things – Awarness and Proactive solutions by the government and private companies and banks.

Self Awareness from the people is hard to come by. The government representatives should come out and talk directly to the people instead of just giving out talks in press conference . TV news channels can give a good coverage by inviting top brass to address people directly.

Address the Nation : When was the last the time we actually sat in front of the TV and listened to Presidential speech on the eve of Independence day ? Be honest about it .. But , this is the right time for Ministry of Finance, Planning Commission, RBI head to directly to the people. We should also have business icons and thought leaders like Naryana Mooorthy, Sam Pitroda, Sunil Mittal, Sachin Tendulkar, Dhoni, and writers , celebrities talk directly to the people. The idea is to instil confidence and security to the people.

Go Vernacular : Talking in high jargon filled English is not gonna do the trick. The biggest curse of India is that we have not been able to permeate the growth of the economy to the villages. Few people realise that villages, tier 2 and 3 cities hold the key to super power status of India. They may not be English educated but they have spending power. And like Unilever’s CEO Mr Paul said in a interview , ” We will have to drive people’s habits” . Very True!

But talk to people in their language.

Start spending but in a controlled way . Educate, Empower and set example and spread the word. Be a thought leader yourself. Ask your friends to spend but not in excess. Try to include Indian products in your grocery. This will fuel domestic economy and also in the long term make us a potential market and make it more investor friendly .

Simple things are can go a long way. You dont have to be a Chief Economist to drive change.

Just a thought : We should stop IMF and S&P500 and other agency give investor ratings during recession. Otherwise people are gonna reach such stats and go into a shell and reduce spending and brakes the FDI’s.

But i must caution that if you are not a keen follower of economic policies happening in India and across the world then you will not be able to grasp the real concept behind what the author is trying to convey in the article. Written in clear and simple words the author of the article is wondering if tthe Govt going dangerously wrong in itr fiscal and monetary policy.

I personally think there is a element of merit in the arguments put forth in the article.

Are we trying to spend the money which we dont have ? Is it not similar to what happened in America in between 1993 and 2007 , the effect of which is now seen as the economic recession now. So, are we getting the wrong economics right in the wrong propotions?

Are we spending more than what we should be spending ? Are we taking the fiscal problem in a lighter sense ?

I dont care what economist you believe in . I personally go for Keynesian . Always have. But you may be a Friedman fan for all I care.

But today’s economic situation is so differenent in its scale and scope that I am willing to let go of Keynesian theories and embrace which will work and sound logic from an development prespective.

I implore you guys to read the article .

Please drop in your queries, doubts, ideas, thoughts so we can have a sensible discussion this and take it forward.

I feel revolted when i see cricket players being “auctioned” and bought for IPL matches.

How is it that the people who are involved in bidding and buying players have the heart to dish out crores of money to buy players when common people across the country…nay world ( because even foreign players are involved) are loosing jobs or tightening their wallet due to economic slow down ?

In December we witnessed one of the most dastardly terrorist attack the world has ever seen. Hundreds died, still you have hundreds in hospitals recovering from their injuries , some are still in trauma caused due to the tragedy .

And yet, here we have a group of extremely wealthy corporate assholes paying huge chunks of money to play 20 overs cricket match. Basically you are just blowing away crores of money in matter of hours.

What i don’t understand is how can Vijay Mallya pay Rs. 7cr on one side for just one English player when his KingFisher airline is making huge losses and owe the government 100cr on airline fuel charges?

Get this straight ! That 100 crore is not any body’s but our money . Suffice to say he owes people like you and me and the rest of India Rs100 cr and plus. It our money – what we pay to the country in the form tax, guys!

But he is not at fault . The fault is completely ours. We are not proactive. And that includes me as well!

If I was proactive I would have asked him , ” dude! who the fuck gave you the right to buy another “human being” , when you don’t have the decency to pay back what you owe the government ? or at least invest that money in improving the efficiency of your company so that you don’t have cut jobs tomorrow ”

I so wanted to ask Mrs Ambani , ” Just because you eat, sleep, drink, swim money , how is that you have the heart to be so bloody ostentatious during such difficult times ? You live in Mumbai, don’t you ? what have you done for the injured or the family of the martyrs of the terrorist attack ? ”

To Ms Preity Zinta – ” That’s right! you have become too old to act as a heroine. Accept that fact. You don’t have producers lined up outside your door to sign up movies. Tough luck! but that is how it is . Use money wisely .. Just because your bf is coming from a wealth family , doesn’t mean that you…. you get the drift , don’t you ? ”

To Ms Shetty – ” You suck ! how long are you gonna flaunt you Big Boss win ? How long are you gonna live under the assumption that people in India really give a hoot about you ? ”

In the olden days wealthy merchants used to buy slaves and prostitutes from the market . Slaves for hard labour and prostitutes for the obvious reasons. Irrespective of the economic situation around them , they continued to eat, sleep, become fat and have a gal time with women.

How different is that from what is happening today at the IPL auctions ?

Here are my questions to you ?

Why are you watching these matches , just to increase TRP ratings and waste your time only to re fill the pockets of these morons ? Why not use that time to go out and play a match with your friends ? That way you excerise your body!

I am not saying that you should stop watching cricket , but hey ! there are other sports in the country too. There are other players looking out for support from you as well .

There are other players in the arena from other sports who are not asking for money but for appreciation. Who are not seeking brand ambassador tags but money for training and infrastructure.

Simple case in point – corporates chased Sania Mirza not only for her win in Wimbledon but she is considered “hot” and “sexy” . Vijinder Kaur looks like a “model” hence he get brand endorsements .

What about other players who won medals for our nation during the Olympics . Sure you said , ” I am proud of you guys”. After that ? Everybody forgets !

We should be ashamed of ourselves, no?

It is ironic that a boxer whos sport is of destructive nature endoring a insurance product ?

And another culprit is the media. Ndtv is so jobless that they dedicated a show just to bring in the bidders to talk /discuss about why they paid so much money and blah … blah .. Nonsense . What is there to discuss ? They came with money, they falunted their wealth , bid like it is done in a market and went home with a bunch of slaves. And yeah, they appeared on TV .. The same goes for other tv channels as well .

I have decided never to watch 20/20 matches. I feel used by the capitalist assholes . I am too intelligent, too smart and have too much diginty to fall for this bloody money making game.

Sure , money is important. Not advocating to stop wacthing cricket matches or stop cheering the cricket team .But there is a limit to everything !

I suggest you guys do the same ! It is only a suggestion , though

Understand one simple thing – end of the day everything is about how many ads were aired, the TRP raitings and money generated. It is not about the game !

When I was working for mobile-worx, a mobile advertising company , we had to connect with lots of prospective clients and customers. Our office is based out of Chennai and we had our clients coming in from other cities of India and Abroad. As a start up company we dint have enough resources to travel all the way to these cities to talk to our clients , talk about our product and give a demo. To cut costs in traveling we instead chose to use online meeting tools .

Here is what we used to do :

First we identified our client – either an advertiser or content developer.

We then made our first cold call , connected with the head of sales or marketing and gave a brief intro about our product.

I then followed it up with a mail , a document ( let me remind you guys that when you send a document about your product to prospective clients always use pdf) about our product and a tentative time to fix the next call meeting.

Once we fixed the call meeting we informed our client that while we wont be able to come to their city personally we can give a demo of our product online itself. It was simple. We log-in to our account, generate a url and pass on the url to our client with his log-in details. Once the client log’s into his account he can easily watch the demo sitting in his office through his computer screen while we used to run through our product online. There was no cost involved for us except for the broadband connection and a monthly/yearly amount we used to pay for the services.

While giving demo , we used Skype to talk to him, simultaneously explaining every step involved in using our product.

It would be like remote accessing the images from my computer screen in yours.

I personally thought it was a fantastic way to communicate with clients. It helped us reducing lots of time and tons of money which would have otherwise been spent on traveling, hotel stay, commuting, food and other miscellaneous expenses which would be obviously paid by the company. It also gave us more time to focus on improving our product and connect with more clients and customers.

This is not to say that one should not to go out to meet clients personally. Meeting clients in their office is still the best way to connect and build relationships in business. Meeting them in person creates personal rapport with them which an online meeting can never compensate. But there are times when one can use Online meetings tools such as these and still make a great impact with clients and customers.

All i am trying to do here is to show you how you can use Web technology to connect with clients and use it for lead generation. A tool like this is extremely useful for start up companies and SME ‘s . For an SME owner , he may have his client in Netherlands or Alaska . It is not possible for him to go all the way there to meet a “prospective” client and seal a deal. There is no guarantee that the deal will come through in the first place. For him Web conference technology will come in very handy.

Go To Meeting , product of Nasdaq listed Citrix Systems Inc is a great online Web confercing tool. You can conduct online meetings using Goto Meeting and Webinars using GoTo Webinar. You must visit their website to know more about their products and what they can do for you and your sales team.

They have now released a White paper on how companies can use Webinars to